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Monday, 28 April 2014

Avebury Stone Circles and Long Barrow West Kennet

On Easter Monday we returned to
Avebury stone circles, which we’d discovered just after Christmas. But it takes a while for us to drive there,
and it felt like we’d only just skimmed its surface before. Soon
after we’d seen Neil Oliver’s The SacredWonders of Britain, which featured a beautifully-shot episode on Avebury,
and that convinced us that the stones were just part of the story
there. So back it was. Last time we’d
been struck by the fact that the landscape was one that you had to get inside
to understand, that lines of sight were slippery and held secrets. And going back to read more about it, I
discovered that this was in part the point:

“the
Neolithic monuments cannot be understood completely from maps but only when we experience the relationship between the
natural topography and man-made earthworks.
By ‘being there’ and moving from place to place we become part of an
intriguing interplay of visibility and concealment which sheds light on
Neolithic attitudes to sacred places and rituals.” (Trubshaw, 2005: 143-4)

What I learnt was that the Avebury
landscape is a network of places, a geographical story, and that parts can
glimpsed from other parts, but none of them put together from a single
perspective. It’s difficult to give a
sense really of how a whole panorama can be invisible except from a specific
point, and again, and again, and again.
It’s not something I’d come across in this dramatic way before. A kind of alternative Easter trail …

So, we started off near Silbury Hill
which was cocooned in the oilseed yellow so bright it practically hurts your
eyes. From where we parked it looked
like this was the only sight to see, but we followed the footpath south away
from it over a hill towards the burial chamber- West Kennet Long Barrow. It is quite staggering this climb as you go
up and up - no sign of anything unusual - and then all of a sudden it’s there,
right on the top of the hill, like some kind of optical illusion. Like no cemetery you've been to before. The part you can go inside corresponds to a
woman’s body, so you enter the womb between the legs, and small chambers form
the head, arms and legs. This felt
fitting as Katie is going through a phase of referring to all things and people
as ‘she’, which I like to pretend is her fledgling feminist consciousness. It felt kind of surprising that the tomb hadn’t
yet been closed off to the public, and people had left wild flowers scattered
about and a candle was burning, and it felt fittingly respectful and free. Serene, but dramatic. On top of the Long Barrow the view was
spectacular back towards Silbury Hill.

We knew the Avenue was the done way
to proceed to Avebury on foot – a path guided at its sides by huge stones – but
as we couldn’t actually see the start of it and have form for getting lost, we decided
not to risk the 3yo’s relatively good humour and drove over to the village. After about half a mile we came to the
Avenue, which was nearer the road than I’d expected, and leads directly to the stone
circles.

Today, being much warmer and drier the
children spent ages climbing up and down the embankments around the stone
circles. It was a very different
experience to before when it had felt more intense, having never been to
anything like this before. Now it was
spring, more inviting, and we were no longer strangers. Lambs meandered around the stones, as did the
humans, although there is so much space here you’re hardly even aware of anyone
else coming into your orbit. New age
drummers provided hypnotic sounds and smells; at another part of the stones a
be-flowered ritual was taking place. None of which raised a question from the
children.

But then it seemed we’d had our quota
of peaceful times and a stressy half hour ensued in which Katie managed to
trash my phone, have an the kind of accident which can only be salvaged by
going commando, and – most disastrously of all – the local National Trust property
had run out of Easter eggs! Luckily, my
children thought on about how they weren’t actually that keen on Easter eggs,
more so on the competitive element of any given situation, and the situation
was salvaged with some chocolate fingers.
So we did a whistle-stop tour of Avebury Manor’s elegant gardens, which
provided a stark contrast to the ruggedness – a different sort of man-made – of
the stones beyond it. And everyone was
totally knackered for going back to school the next day.
Result.

What places have you discovered
recently that you think you’ll keep going back to?

Years ago, when I worked in publishing, I helped with a photo shoot in Avebury. It really is a magical place, and you've captured it well in this post. Our own treasure is a fishing town in Dumfries & Galloway called Kirkcudbright. It's known as 'the artist's town' and it was used as a backdrop for a lot of the Wicker Man. Definitely worth a visit.

Now that sounds impossibly glamorous, Nell. I wish I had interesting tales to tell my children about my career!

Kirkcudbright sounds intriguing, I love somewhere with a story to follow. I'm currently working on convincing my other half that we need to go to Ireland to do stone circles & Game of Thrones sets tourism.

We have a few favourite places. The girls and I love Wilton House with it's adventure playground and lovely gardens, our local ranges are a favourite and the new fave is a National Trust owned area called Waggoner's Wells. We went to Avebury a year or so ago and loved it. It was a bright, cold winter's day when we went and it was magical and we also enjoyed Avebury Manor as you could touch all the furniture and climb on the beds! This would be a great post to link up to 'Let's Have an Adventure' linky that I'm co-hosting this week on my blog (if you get a chance!)